Category: Blasphemy

The template for journalism?

| 1 Comment
| Blasphemy, Defamation, Defamation Bill 2006, journalism, Press Council

Irish Times clock, image originally hosted on Irish Times websiteA Leader in today’s Irish Times welcomes the passing of the Defamation Bill, 2006, and argues that it will set an appropriate template for the practice of journalism in Ireland:

The template for journalism

The Defamation Bill has concluded its passage through the Oireachtas, with a few deserved wobbly moments on blasphemy, and now awaits the signature of President McAleese. It will set the template for the practise of journalism in the years ahead. …

The new regime for journalism will operate on twin pillars. The Bill attempts – quite successfully – a balancing of constitutional rights: between the public’s right to know and the citizen’s right to a good name. … The concession to the practise of journalism is the new defence of “reasonable publication” allowing newspapers to publish stories of public importance for the public benefit if they can be shown to have been thoroughly investigated and done in good faith – even if allegations made in them turn out to be untrue.

The quid pro quo for these changes is the Office of Press Ombudsman and an independent Press Council which are given legal privilege for their findings in the Bill. These offices give readers a formal and free complaints system which has been in operation for more than a year.

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Defamation Bill passed by the Seanad

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| Blasphemy, Defamation, Defamation Bill 2006

A guillotine, via The Guillotine Headquarters websiteHaving been passed by the Dáil (lower house of parliament) earlier this week, today’s papers are full of the news that the Defamation Bill, 2006 was passed yesterday by the Seanad (upper house of parliament) (the full debate is here); all that is now required for it to become law is the signature of the President.

However, even at this late stage, there was still time for another twist on the Bill’s sinuous route into law. From the front page of this morning’s Irish Times:

Defamation Bill stumbles through Seanad after lost vote

The Government lost a vote in the Seanad yesterday on the Defamation Bill but managed to salvage the legislation by calling for a walk-through vote which gave enough time for two missing Senators to be found.

The Government defeat came on an amendment to the Bill proposed by Senator Eugene Regan of Fine Gael proposing to delete the provision in the legislation making blasphemy a crime.

In an electronic vote whereby Senators press a button, the Government was defeated by 22 votes to 21 in the 60-member upper house.

However, Fianna Fáil whip Diarmuid Wilson immediately requested a walk-through vote which takes about 10 minutes to complete.

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Defamation Bill passed by the Dáil

| 3 Comments
| Blasphemy, Defamation, Defamation Bill 2006

A guillotine, via The Guillotine Headquarters websiteAs recently prefigured on this blog, the Government has indeed used the legislative guillotine to force through their final amendments to the Defamation Bill, 2006. According to the RTÉ news website:

Libel law revisions pass the Dáil

The legislation to revise the country’s libel laws has been passed in the Dáil and will now go to the Seanad. …

Update (9 July 2009): Dáil debate focuses on Defamation Bill (Irish Times); Libel and blasphemy bill passed by the Dail (Irish Independent); Dáil Debate (Vol 687, No 4; 8 July 2009).…

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When is a guillotine a good thing? When it’s used on a Defamation Bill?

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| Blasphemy, Copyright, Defamation, Defamation Bill 2006

A guillotine, via The Guillotine Headquarters websiteIn this morning’s Irish Times:

Defamation Bill to pass within weeks

The Bill to reform Ireland’s libel laws is likely to be enacted within a fortnight, three years after it was published. The Defamation Bill was introduced by then minister for justice Michael McDowell in 2006 to repeal the existing legislation which dates from 1961.

The original government decision to approve the drafting of the new Bill was made as far back as June 2005 … the remaining stages of the Bill will be taken in the Dáil and Seanad over the next two weeks, with the Bill expected to complete its passage through the Oireachtas on July 10th, the last sitting day before the summer recess.

After dragging their heels for so long, this is to be achieved by means of a legislative guillotine:

Guillotine allows ‘one minute 20 seconds’ per amendment

A guillotine on housing legislation allowed just one minute and 20 seconds for each of the 170 amendments to be dealt with, Labour whip Emmet Stagg told the Dáil in repeated criticism of end-of-term deadlines. …

A further sotry in the same edition of the Irish Times lists Bills which are likely to be guillotined, including the Defamation Bill:

Coalition to ‘guillotine’ debate on Bills

The Government will “guillotine” debate on at least 17 Bills in the last three weeks of the Dáil before the summer recess, Opposition parties have claimed.

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Incitement

| 2 Comments
| Blasphemy, Freedom of Expression

Agnes Ntamabyariro, via New Times, Rwanda.From yesterday’s Irish Times:

Rwanda jails ex-minister over genocide

KIGALI – A Rwandan court jailed former justice minister Agnes Ntamabyariro for life yesterday after finding her guilty of incitement during the 1994 genocide.

Ntamabyariro is the first senior former government official to be tried by the authorities in Kigali over the killing of 800,000 minority ethnic Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.

“She has been individually implicated in those crimes,” Augustine Nkusi, Rwanda’s national prosecutor, told reporters. – (Reuters)

She is to appeal. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda had convicted directors of the Rwandan radio station Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) of incitement to commit genocide (Case No ICTR-99-52-T The Prosecutor v Ferdinand Nahimana, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, and Hassan Ngeze; excellent background summary here), but this is the first such case in the Rwandan courts.

Geert Wilders, via the BBC.From today’s Irish Times:

Dutch MP faces prosecution for anti-Islam film

AMSTERDAM – Right-wing Dutch MP Geert Wilders, who has made a short film accusing the Koran of inciting violence, must be prosecuted for anti-Islam comments, an Amsterdam court said yesterday.

The court overruled the public prosecutor, who had argued that Mr Wilders, whose film Fitna urged Muslims to tear out “hate-filled” verses from the Koran, was protected by the right to free speech.

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Beware, unintended consequences

| 5 Comments
| Blasphemy, Censorship, Defamation, Media and Communications

Durer Blasphemy woodcut, via wikipediaDaithí has just published a wonderful post on the The strange death of criminal libel?. On the issue of criminal libel, he concludes that the Defamation Bill, 2006, currently receiving its Report and Final Stages in the Seanad even as I write this post,

will without further amendment provide for

* the repeal of the [Defamation Act], 1961 [blogged here] including Part 2 dealing with various criminal offences
* the explicit repeal of “the common law offences of criminal libel, seditious libel and obscene libel�
* no provisions on a new offence of the publication of gravely harmful statements
* no specific mention of blasphemy or blasphemous libel other than the repeal of s 13 (as part of the general repeal) of the 1961 Act (though I think that might mean that, especially in conjunction with the Constitution, blasphemous libel – or blasphemy, indeed – would continue to exist – but see note below on the definition of criminal libel)

And that, I believe, is good news.

I agree; it is thoroughly good news. I agree that the repeal of the 1961 Act and of various of the common law libel offences is a good thing. Moreover, the removal of the proposed replacement offence of publication of gravely harmful statements is an even better thing.…

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Legislating Truth

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| Blasphemy, Freedom of Expression, Media and Communications, prior restraint

I am a politics junkie – I will watch party conferences and conventions, and enjoy the experiences! And I still remember a Fianna Fáil Árd Fhéis (national party conference) in which Charlie Haughey began a key section of his leader’s speech by asserting: “The truth, as we in Fianna Fáil see it, is …”. I don’t remember what he said after that, because I was so flabbergasted at the audacity of making truth contingent upon a political point of view. Of course, this was only a small thing compared to the flabbergasting audacity of other aspects of Haughey’s career, but the attitude of subordinating truth to political power is not unique to him or to Fianna Fáil. A particularly egregious example is provided by reports this morning that the author of a book on anti-Semitism in Poland may face court action. According to Derek Scally in the Irish Times (sub req’d):

The public prosecutor in Krakow has launched a preliminary investigation into a US historian who says post-war Poland continued where the Nazis left off in persecuting Jews. Jan Tomasz Gross [home page at Princeton | wikipedia] could, under a law passed by the Kaczynski government, face a prison sentence if found guilty of “accusing the Polish nation of participating in communist or Nazi crimes”.

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